GOOD MATES - BIG DREAM - COACHING WORLD CHAMPIONS

2022 is the 51th anniversary of the 1971 Ping Pong Diplomacy, which refers to the exchange of table tennis players between China, America and Australia in the early 1970s.

      Paul Zhao and Sun Li - 1976                                    Shaolin Gao - 1979

Australian table tennis team of Anne Middleton, Paul Pinkewich, Steve Knapp, Noel Shorter and John Jackson visited Beijing in April 1971. It has been marked as a key turning point in relations of Australia and China with different backgrounds, and the policy approach has since been successfully carried out elsewhere.

       Paul Zhao, Sun Li and David Beaumont - 2006         Paul Zhao and Steve Dainton - 2017    

At the same time, in Beijing four national level professional table tennis players: Paul Zhao, Shaolin Gao, Jianbo Zhang and Sun Li started their new journey with a big dream: to coach more junior players and youth players to become the world champions.

Paul Zhao, Shaolin Gao and Jianbo Zhang have successfully coached thousands of junior players at PCYC Table Tennis Club during past two decades. Hundreds of them became the NSW State Junior Team players, and dozens of them became the Australian National Junior Team players.

Currently, ten Australian National Junior and Hopes squad members in NSW are training or have been training with Paul Zhao, Shaolin Gao and Jianbo Zhang in PCYC. It accounts for 45% of the Australian National Junior and Hopes squad members from whole New South Wales.

   Shaolin Gao and Chulong Nie - 2020           Chulong Nie - 2021 World Youth Championships

NSW junior player Chulong Nie, who only started professional training in early 2018 with Shaolin Gao, Paul Zhao and Jianbo Zhang, has come up astonishingly fast and ranked 1st in Australia for U13 Boys in 2020. He is also the only junior player selected from NSW by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) to represent Australia to attend the 2021 ITTF World Youth Championships in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal.

                  Paul Zhao - 2019                       Jianbo Zhang and Chulong Nie - 2021         

Paul Zhao was awarded the 25 Years of Service Award by Table Tennis Australia in 2019. His notable highlights and achievements include, but are not limited to:

- National Coach - the Australian Men's Team at World Championships 2006

- National Coach - the Australian Men's Team at World Junior Championships 2005

- National Coach - the Australian Youth Olympic Festival 2003

- National Assistant Coach - the Commonwealth Championships 2013

- National Assistant Coach - ITTF Training Camp 2013

- National Assistant Coach - ITTF-Oceania Cup and Championships 2014

- National Assistant Coach – ITTF Australian Open 2015/2016/2017

- Table Tennis New South Wales State Coaching Director from 2002 to 2022

- Coached dozens of players to become State Champions and National Champions

                                                  Paul Zhao and Sun Li - 2019

Shaolin Gao won his national championships in China in 1977, 1978 and 1979, and he is still an active player today. He won the Gold Medal at China National Table Tennis Association Members Championships in 2019 and 2021; and won the Gold Medal of 50 and Over Men's Singles in the 2016 Australian National Veteran Championships. Shaolin Gao also published one professional table tennis book about long pimple skills. Jianbo Zhang won his national championship in China in 1978, and won the Gold Medal at the 2015 China National Tour.

        Gold Medals - Shaolin Gao - 1979 & 2019   Gold Medal – Jianbo Zhang – 2015

Shaolin Gao has coached the world champions of Lin Ma, Hao Wang and Zhen Cao etc in China before he migrated to Australia in 2014.

Sun Li and Paul Zhao won their national champion in China in 1979. Paul Zhao has coached the world champions of Yaping Deng and Zihe Chen etc in China before he went to Kuwait and Australia to coach table tennis in 1990’s.

Sun Li continued to coach table tennis in Beijing and became the coach of China National Table Tennis Team since 1996. Currently Sun Li is the Head Coach of the Chinese National Table Tennis Women's Team. As a very experienced and successful coach, Sun Li coached and raised Nan Wang, Yining Zhang and Xiaoxia li to be the Grand Slam World Champions.

     Gold Medal - Paul Zhao and Sun Li - 1979           Paul Zhao and Sun Li - 2019

All good mates Paul Zhao, Shaolin Gao, Jianbo Zhang and Sun Li have been working hard to promote table tennis in China, Australia and worldwide. They are the culture ambassadors to keep China and Australia connected and to create an unbroken channel of unity via table tennis. Their contributions to table tennis and the friendships between Australia and China are invaluable. 

David Lee and Michael Li wish to gratefully acknowledge Shaolin Gao, Paul Zhao, Sun Li, Jianbo Zhang, TTNSW, TTA and ITTF.